The Collaborative International Dictionary
Commence \Com*mence"\ (k[o^]m*m[e^]ns"), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Commenced (k[o^]m*m[e^]nst"); p. pr. & vb. n. Commencing.] [F. commencer, OF. comencier, fr. L. com- + initiare to begin. See Initiate.]
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To have a beginning or origin; to originate; to start; to begin.
Here the anthem doth commence.
--Shak.His heaven commences ere the world be past.
--Goldsmith. -
To begin to be, or to act as. [Archaic]
We commence judges ourselves.
--Coleridge. -
To take a degree at a university. [Eng.]
I question whether the formality of commencing was used in that age.
--Fuller.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of commence English)
Usage examples of "commencing".
It's an election year, some of the Bohunks are commencing to vote, and the late Zoltan Kun was popular as smallpox.
But just as the cows were really commencing to act up, as was only to be expected, a dozen-odd riders came down the trail to head them off.
As it's commencing to shape up, the gang's been taking advantage of how thin everyone's spread out, with less than five thousand folks, red and white, hither and yon across an area the size of, say, Connecticut.
I'm commencing to doubt the bunch I met to the south were real Horse Indians.
No time, however, was lost in commencing hostilities, and Laevinus attacked Zacynthus.
After these rapid incursions he turned his attention to the war which the Aetolians, in conjunction with the Romans, were commencing against him.
Before commencing the siege of Syracuse, I made various attempts at a peaceful settlement, first by sending envoys and then by personal interviews with the leaders.
The consul thought that, before commencing operations, it would be better to send an embassy to the Achaeans and give an undertaking that if they would abandon the king and go over to the Romans, Corinth should be incorporated in the Achaean league.
Winkle, commencing in a very loud key, and ending in a very faint one.
Tom's mode of commencing the conversation being rather unusual, not to say startling.
But this I do know that since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this earth I have lost all respect for time--I am commencing to doubt that such a thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.
Since we had entered the canyon we had had no glimpse of our pursuers, and I was commencing to hope that they had lost our trail and that we would reach the now rapidly nearing cliffs in time to scale them before we should be overtaken.
In fact, th e Spruance design had been frozen within three months of Pesthouse's disastrous conclusion, with construction commencing exactly fifty-nine days after the design was sealed.
As this is our last conference before commencing the operation, I will now open the floor for discussion.
All targets in the fourth anthill have been destroyed, commencing withdrawal.